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Decoding Taylor Swift's Speak Now Album: All The Famous Boys

Speak Now (Taylor's Version) hit streaming and the conversation over which of her former lovers each song is about has been reinvigorated

Calling all internet sleuths, armchair detectives, English Lit. majors and of course, Swifties of every persuasion — it’s time to, once again, decode Taylor Swift’s Speak Now album.

Taylor dropped a re-recording of Speak Now on July 7, 2023, over a decade after the original hit the shelves of now-defunct record stores back in 2010.

Swift has been re-recording and re-releasing her first six albums in an effort to regain control of the master recordings of her efforts after a very messy sale of said masters.

These new recordings have reinvigorated her already rabid fanbase and have given new life to one of Swifties’ most beloved pastimes: decoding the lyrics to her songs.

And, if we are truthful, the detective work is mostly figuring out which of Taylor’s past boyfriends inspired which song.

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Announcing the re-release of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), the songwriter said on social media: “I first made Speak Now, completely self-written, between the ages of 18 and 20.”

“The songs that came from this time in my life were marked by their brutal honesty, unfiltered diaristic confessions and wild wistfulness. I love this album because it tells a tale of growing up, flailing, flying and crashing … and living to speak about it.”

As displayed in her social media note, Taylor has a penchant for writing elegantly and vaguely about her life, feelings, and process. This love of allusions, of opaque metaphor, and soap opera storytelling also drives her songwriting.

The mystery — and the unnamed boys — keeps her fans endlessly captivated.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t have clues … plenty of very obvious clues.

“Praying for John [Mayer].”

Mine

The lead single on Speak Now has long been believed by fans to be about the late Glee star Cory Monteith.

However, Taylor has never confirmed that rumor. What she has said about the song has been more about the experience that inspired it … which, as it turned out, was more about the possibility of a relationship.

Taylor told Rolling Stone it was about “a boy I liked at a certain time.” She went on to say it was her speculating about “what it would be like if I actually let my guard down.”

“This is a situation where a guy that I just barely knew put his arm around me by the water,” Taylor also said of the song while speaking with Yahoo Music, “and I saw the entire relationship flash before my eyes, almost like a weird science-fiction movie.”

“After I wrote the song, things sort of fell apart, as things so often do. And I hadn’t talked to him in a couple months. And the song came out, and that day, I got an e-mail from him. And I was like, ‘Yes!’ Because that one was sort of half-confession and half-prediction or projection of what I saw.”

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Sparks Fly

See the liner notes on this one.

The album’s notes contained what many believe is a hidden message: “Portland, OR.”

Swift archeologists unearthed an ancient Myspace post from October 2006, which sees Taylor recall a night she played at a Portland bar, Duke’s. She was the opening act for country singer Jake Owen.

The Myspace posting raved about Jake. Swifties have also noted that Sparks Fly mentions falling in love at an empty bar.

Back to December

All signs point to Twilight in December.

Taylor Lautner believes the song is about him … and no one thinks he’s so vain for thinking it.

He and Taylor had a brief romance after costarring in Valentine’s Day, splitting in December 2009.

Lautner went on to trend in May when he told TODAY that he felt “safe” with the upcoming re-release of Speak Now, and said it was a “great album.”

However, what made him go viral was when he said he was “Praying for John [Mayer].”

Mayer has previously said the song “really humiliated” him.

Speak Now

This one is not about her … according to Taylor.

“One of my friends … the guy she had been in love with since childhood was marrying this other girl,” the singer told Yahoo! Music back in 2010.

“And my first inclination was to say, ‘Well, are you gonna speak now?’ And then I started thinking about what I would do if I was still in love with someone who was marrying someone who they shouldn’t be marrying. And so I wrote this song about exactly what my game plan would be.”

Dear John

Break up letters … Age gaps … and name drops.

There’s lots of allusions and possible clues here. But everyone seems to agree this one is about her dalliance with John Mayer.

The lyrics mention an age difference between the two lovers (Swift was 19 when she dated Mayer, who was 31).

While Taylor previously talked about how “tough” the song was to write, she said during a show on her Eras Tour in June before performing Dear John: “I’m 33 years old. I don’t care about anything that happened to me when I was 19.”

“I’m not putting this album out so that you can go and should feel the need to defend me on the internet against someone you think I might have written a song about 14 billion years ago when I was 19,” Taylor added. “I do not care. We have all grown up. We are good.”

Mayer has previously said the song “really humiliated” him.

Mean

Mean has long been believed to be about critic Bob Lefsetz, who called her “young and dumb” after her 2010 Grammys performance.

Taylor later admitted on 60 Minutes: “The things that were said about me by this dude floored me and leveled me.”

“I don’t have thick skin. I hate reading criticisms. You never really get past things hurting you.”

She then performed Mean at the 2012 Grammys.

The Story of Us

Taylor did confirm that Dear John and The Story of Us are both about the same guy, which means, if the internet is correct, John Mayer is the inspiration.

“The Story of Us is about running into someone I had been in a relationship with at an awards show, and we were seated a few seats away from each other,” she previously told USA Today. “I just wanted to say to him, ‘Is this killing you? Because it’s killing me.’ But I didn’t. Because I couldn’t. Because we both had these silent shields up.”

Many think the song is about their CMT Awards appearance in 2010. The liner notes, once again, give a clue with the words “CMT Awards.”

Never Grow Up

“Never Grow Up is a song about the fact that I don’t quite know how I feel about growing up. It’s tricky,” Swift once wrote on her website, per Genius.

“Growing up happens without you knowing it. Growing up is such a crazy concept because a lot of times when you were younger you wish you were older. I look out into a crowd every night and I see a lot of girls that are my age and going through exactly the same things as I’m going through. Every once in a while I look down and I see a little girl who is 7 or 8, and I wish I could tell her all of this. There she is becoming who she is going to be and forming her thoughts and dreams and opinions. I wrote this song for those little girls.”

That’s a word which that person used one time in an email … so I purposely wrote it in the song, so he would know.

Enchanted

“I started writing that in the hotel room when I got back, because it was just this positive, wistful feeling of ‘I hope you understand just how much I loved meeting you,'” Taylor previously told Yahoo! Music about an experience meeting a dude in NYC. “Using the word ‘wonderstruck’ [in the lyrics] was done on purpose, because that’s a word which that person used one time in an email … so I purposely wrote it in the song, so he would know.”

“ADAM” appears in the liner notes.

Owl City singer Adam Young then wrote a blog in 2011, where he said: “I’m so tremendously honored that Taylor would write such an elegant song and thereby offer a gracious nod in my direction. Needless to say, I was lost for words and utterly smitten. I couldn’t stop smiling.”

Better Than Revenge

Taylor has actually changed the lyrics to this song with her re-recording.

Fans quickly noticed the change on “Better Than Revenge” upon its release, 13 years after the original.

The lyrics “She’s an actress, but she’s better known for the things that she does on the mattress,” has not aged well.

Now, though, the line has been tweaked as, “She’s an actress, he was a moth to the flame, she was holding the matches.” As the song is believed to have been written about a real person (Joe Jonas’ next girlfriend after Swift, Camilla Belle). Though Swift never confirms or denies any real-life inspirations, this new line is certainly sitting better with some fans.

For years now, Swift has been adamant that women should not be judged for who they date and how they date. This powerful stance has only made the line even more problematic in hindsight, as many have interpreted it as “slut shaming,” something that flies against everything Swift stands for.

Innocent

Innocent was in response to Kanye West interrupting her 2009 VMAs speech.

“I think a lot of people expected me to write a song about [West],” she told NYMag.com. “But, for me, it was important to write a song to him.”

“It doesn’t really add anything good if I start victimizing myself and complaining about things. Because I’m proud of that performance at the VMAs last year, where my fans helped me get through it,” she said. “And there was a lot that went down backstage that I will always be thankful for, and the fans in the subway know exactly what happened that night. I feel everything. I’ve never had this thick skin that can’t be… It’s not like I am bulletproof in any sense of the word.”

I don’t care that you have tattoos. I don’t care that you have a gap between your teeth. I love you for who you are.

Haunted

Taylor once blogged, per Genius, the song was “about the moment that you realize the person you’re in love with is drifting and fading fast. And you don’t know what to do, but in that period of time, in that phase of love, where it’s fading out, time moves so slowly. Everything hinges on what that last text message said, and you’re realizing that he’s kind of falling out of love.”

“That’s a really heartbreaking and tragic thing to go through, because the whole time you’re trying to tell yourself it’s not happening. I went through this, and I ended up waking up in the middle of the night writing this song about it.”

Fans believe it’s another song about Taylor Lautner, as the song was originally written for the New Moon soundtrack, starring Lautner.

Last Kiss

Here’s some more detective work.

Taylor once told Ellen DeGeneres that her song Forever and Always was written after her split from Joe Jonas.

The words “forever and always” appear in the liner notes of Speak Now for the track Last Kiss.

You do the math.

Long Live

“This song is about my band, and my producer, and all the people who have helped us build this brick by brick,” Taylor once blogged about her song Long Live, per Genius.

“The fans, the people who I feel that we are all in this together, this song talks about the triumphant moments that we’ve had in the last two years. ‘Long Live’ is about how I feel reflecting on it. This song for me is like looking at a photo album of all the award shows, and all the stadium shows, and all the hands in the air in the crowd. It’s sort of the first love song that I’ve written to my team.”

Ours

Taylor once said on VH1’s Storytellers that Ours was written about a “guy nobody thought [she] should be with.”

“So I wrote this song specifically just to play it for him, just to show him, ‘I don’t care what anyone says,” she continued. “I don’t care that you have tattoos. I don’t care that you have a gap between your teeth. I love you for who you are.’ And that song ended up actually making it on a record [Speak Now] and becoming a No. 1 song.”

I turned to one of my friends and said, ‘It’s like watching Superman fly away.

Superman

There’s a lot of guesses on this one but none that really stick.

And according to the songwriter it was really just about an offhand remark she once made about a guy she was “enamored” with.

“This song got its title by something that I just said randomly in conversation,” Taylor told a live audience once of Superman, according to Taste of Country. “[When] he walked out of the room, I turned to one of my friends and said, ‘It’s like watching Superman fly away.'”

New Tracks from the "Vault"

Taylor also added six new tracks from her “Vault” to the re-release.

These include: Electric Touch (featuring Fall Out Boy), When Emma Falls in Love, I Can See You, Castles Crumbling (with Hayley Williams), Foolish One, and Timeless.

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